


Wait For the Wheel

by LorettaFryingPan



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Chroma Conclave Arc, Gen, Pre-Stream (Critical Role), Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 20:03:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorettaFryingPan/pseuds/LorettaFryingPan
Summary: Vax and Vex return to Byroden to find it a smoldering heap. Allura, Kima, and Drake arrive in the midst of hunting down the dragon that caused the destruction. What if they met in the middle?





	Wait For the Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> This has been rattling around in my head for a year and a half or so. When Allura described how she was part of the party that originally dealt with Thordak, and her first-hand account of Byroden's destruction, I had to wonder if any paths may have crossed on that fateful day.
> 
> Title comes from a Farscape episode about highs, lows, and the cyclical nature of life that FUCKED ME UP back in the day.

The ashes of Byroden have cooled by the time they get there, and few people have answers. The local reeve can’t even give them an estimate for how many people were slain, beyond “most of them”. All that remains of this humble little town are ash and charred timbers, scattered with blackened bones.

Distantly, Allura can hear weeping. She watches Kima talk to the few survivors, people who were out of town when Thordak descended upon it.

“We have to be better than this,” she mutters to Drake, feeling anger burn hot in her chest. Her grip on her staff becomes white-knuckled as she surveys the wreckage of these people’s lives. They have done nothing but fail, time and again, always arriving in time to find another destroyed village and a trail gone nearly cold.

Drake is busy scratching scrying runes into the blackened earth so he doesn’t look over to her, but he says, quietly enough that it could be offhand, “we’re close.”

“How many more times, Drake? How many more times are other people going to suffer for _our_ failings?”

He doesn’t answer, either because he’s feeling as beaten-down and frustrated as she is, or because his senses have left his body to track their quarry down. She sits down heavily on what was once the foundation of the tavern. She feels bits of charcoal crush underneath her, pressing grime into the fabric of her dress.

In the back of her mind she can hear her teachers chiding her, telling her to stay focused and not let her emotions get the better of her. If she cannot focus, she cannot cast. If she cannot cast, she cannot help.

Slowly, she pulls her frayed nerves together and takes a breath. She looks up and steps away from Drake to look at what remains.

A couple of hunched figures are picking through the rubble of a house on the edge of town, and a handful of people are standing in a tight huddle occasionally pointing at different buildings, apparently planning what the next steps for this village are.

“South.”

Drake’s voice pulls her out of her reverie. His scrying is done, and she looks over to him.

“We need to head south to catch up with him.”

Kima catches Allura’s eye, and she waves her back to them. A few minutes plotting their route over the map, and then they’re off again. They’re almost out of the town’s boundary when-

"Please, wait!" A voice calls out behind the group. Allura turns to see two people standing behind them.

They're obviously brother and sister, twins with dark hair, and dark eyes, and tear tracks cutting identical lines down their faces. They wear worn and patched road clothes that have been almost irreparably stained with ash. They're children, or close enough.

"Please," the brother says, reaching a hand out to them. "No one will tell us what happened."

And Kima, for all her gruff nature and occasionally abrasive sense of righteousness, is the one to reach out, to sling her maul over her back and hold out her hands to the two of them. She has always known how to do this, how to reach out to people and connect to them when they’re hurting, and it has nothing to do with the gleaming holy symbol around her neck.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, “There was a dragon.”

The brother gasps, the sound almost a sob, as he clings to his sister with one hand and Kima’s hand with the other.

The sister grips her brother tightly, and Allura can see her hands shake as she speaks, reaching for Kima to complete the circle. “What kind of dragon?"

“A red one.” Kima pauses, reconsiders. “An _ancient_ red one.”

Usually that’s where they lose people-most folk know that chromatic dragons are destructive and violent, but the subtleties of colors and ages are less common knowledge. But the twins just nod, and either they understand the enormity of what that means or they’re just pretending to.

“And you’re going to kill it.” The brother looks at each of them, and seems to see something that makes him nod without waiting for an actual answer.

Oh gods, that is the hope. There is such confidence in their faces and Allura wonders where it is coming from.

“Let us help you,” the sister says. They’re both armed, her with a bow and quiver and him with a handful of daggers on his belt.

She can recognize their half-elven features, and knows that children of such a heritage tend to age slowly, so the pair of them are likely older than they look. But still, they look far too young to be out on their own, much less offering to hunt a dragon in a grief-stricken quest for revenge.

“Don’t you have somewhere you can go?” Drake asks them, and Allura hates that she can guess their answer so easily.

“No,” the brother says.

“This was the only place for us to go,” the sister continues.

“We’ve been traveling on our own for a while now.” They talk in tandem, going back and forth seamlessly.

Allura knows a Syngornian accent when she hears it, and the dissonance of hearing such a rigidly cultured pronunciation come from these dirty, tired siblings is jarring. The more she looks at them, the more she can see the marks of hunger and hard times written across their faces and forms.

Twin half-elves with wealthy accents and no family. At least, no family they can claim. No one in this town would tell them anything either, and now they are being passed on once again.

Allura feels a deep, puncturing sorrow at their situation, but she will not let children follow them into danger for the sake of giving them somewhere to go.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “But we can’t take you with us. I’ve no doubt you can look after yourselves, but this isn’t about that. This dragon is a threat like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

She straightens her spine and steps closer to them, holding out her hand.

“But I promise you, we will stop this beast. This will not happen again.”

She can feel Kima’s sharp stare at her back as she says it, as she holds out her hand to shake. Kima is many things, but she is also a paladin of Bahamut, and holds the sanctity of her word higher than her life. Once they’re out of the twins’ earshot Allura is going to get an earful about making promises she can’t keep.

But that’s the crux of it. She wants to keep it, desperately.

The brother takes Kima’s hand first, and shakes it. Allura can see his jaw working, like he wants to say something else but can’t quite bring himself to. Or maybe he’s trying to hold back.

His sister takes Kima’s hand next, and her eyes are already hardened with resolve.

“Well, we won’t keep you,” she says. “Thank you for your honesty.”

“Hopefully our paths will cross again,” Allura says.

“Once the dragon is dead,” the brother says, the faintest smile on his face.

“Indeed,” she agrees, and they take their leave.

It is easier, somehow, to keep going. Having _someone_ who believes they can win is such a small thing, but one with considerable power. As they walk away from Byroden, Allura knows, although she doesn’t know where this knowledge comes from, that they can win this fight. It warms her.

“You mean that.” Kima says to her, once they’re out of earshot. It’s not a question.

“I do,” she replies.

“Good.”

“The next time we see Thordak,” Allura says, “It will be the last time.”

“From your lips to the gods’ ears,” Drake says, a smile on his face for the first time in weeks.

And off they go, to hunt the dragon. To make the sacrifices mean something.

 

////\\\\\\\////\\\\\\\////\\\\\\\

 

As it turns out, the gods aren’t too keen on listening. Allura is lucky to be alive, and as she takes stock of the scattered refugees that Vox Machina managed to pull from the wreckage of Emon she wonders how many people she knows weren’t so lucky. She thinks of Shaun Gilmore, hanging on by a thread in one of the castle bedrooms, and decides to count her blessings where she can.

Thordak escaped. Gods have mercy, Thordak escaped. That sort of magic-- Allura can’t begin to fathom _how_ it was done, let alone by _whom_.

So she goes to talk to Vox Machina, because even though they are bloody and beaten they refuse to break, and they went _back_ into the city to rescue more people, and they are Tal’Dorei’s best hope. She has to tell them everything she knows.

What she does not expect is for any of Vox Machina to have as personal connection to this dragon as she does.

In her defense, it has been a very long time. And Vex and Vax are no longer the scared, dirty children she met all those years ago. Regular meals, several haircuts, and new armor –to say nothing of the _bear_ that follows Vex’ahlia around- go a long way to making it hard to recognize someone. On top of it all, Allura’s nerves are more than a little frayed.

She barely remembers that meeting, when she tells Vox Machina of her previous experiences with Thordak. But as soon as she describes the sight of Byroden left in ashes, the look of blank shock on the twins’ faces is like gazing directly into the past.

Allura has come to know the twins as strong, vibrant, and caring people; to overlay that familiarity over the lonely, hurting children that she, Kima, and Drake met all those years ago nearly gives her vertigo.

She doesn’t know if they’re having the same sort of realization that she is; more likely they’re reeling over the fact that the dragon that destroyed their first home has now destroyed their second.

She takes a breath, and tucks the revelation away to deal with later. When the meeting is over, she’ll find a quiet spot and figure out what to say to them.

How to apologize for breaking her promise.

+++

It is Vax who finds her first. On one of the parapets of Whitestone castle, where she’s looking out over the city and trying to figure out what the hell to do next. He’s silent as always, but has the good grace to not actually sneak up on her.

“Been a while,” he says, leaning against the wall. She laughs; it’s little more than a forceful sigh, but it’s the closest she’s come in the past few days so it counts. He says it with such an easy tone that it wouldn’t have been out of place as idle pleasantries at a dinner party; she doesn’t know how he manages it.

“I’m sorry we didn’t recognize you sooner,” he says. There’s a wan smile on his face, and dark bags under his eyes.

“To be fair, I didn’t recognize you either.”

“It’s strange to think how we’ve all come together again. You think Kima will remember us?”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it, once you remind her. You’ve both changed quite a bit.”

“We’ve all changed.” Vax pauses, like he wants to say something. Whatever it is, he keeps it to himself. He looks at his hands, and her eyes follow- he still has blood and soot under his nails, in the deepest creases of his palms.

The silence stretches between them. Distantly, she can see the city of Whitestone, and wonders where the refugees will be settled.

“I suppose we have,” she says, for lack of anything else. She doesn’t feel different; she feels just as rudderless now as she felt all those years ago.

Best to get this over with. “I’m sorry.”

Vax turns to face her, one elbow on the railing and confusion on his face. “What for?”

“I promised you that we would get rid of Thordak.” The confusion doesn’t fade from his face.

“Allura, there is nothing to forgive,” he says. She gives him a flat look, but he persists. “I’m serious. You did everything in your power to rid this plane of Thordak, and you succeeded. If you had killed him instead, and someone resurrected him, would you still feel the need to apologize?”

Not waiting for an answer, he goes on. “I appreciate the sentiment, but it’s not your fault.” He reaches out and puts a hand on her shoulder. “You kept your promise. You couldn’t kill him, but you made sure he wouldn’t hurt anyone else. You got rid of him.”

She doesn’t say anything, and Vax’s mouth twists at her lack of response but he doesn’t call her on it.

“You did keep the promise that we would meet again, too,” he says, smiling.

“I suppose I did.” That, at least, brings some comfort.

“It feels like fate, a little bit. Like we’re meant to be doing things this way.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who put a lot of stock in fate.”

Vax hums noncommittally, and thinks for a moment. “I wouldn’t say that I am, but there has to be something to the fact that our paths didn’t split forever after Byroden. It’s hard to explain, but this feels right.”

And as he says that, she starts to believe him, just a bit. There is a truth to his words, and suddenly things don’t seem quite so hopeless as before.

+++

Vex is both easier and harder to find than her brother. Vox Machina is only going to be in Whitestone for a couple of days, but she has busied herself with the workings of the city. She’s always in the middle of a crowd; which makes her simple to locate, but difficult to talk to.

Opportunity comes in the late afternoon, when she spots Vex sitting at the base of the Sun Tree. Trinket is sunning himself in the fading light, and several of the refugee children are napping against him. Allura takes a seat next to her and watches the gentle scene.

“You know,” Vex says after a minute, breaking the silence, “I was angry that we couldn’t go with you. I wanted to avenge our mother and destroy that beast.”

Straight to the point. Allura is grateful, since that saves her the awkward run-up.

“I studied. Tirelessly. I learned everything I could about dragons, so I could kill them.”

“It seems to have served you well so far,” Allura says mildly. Both of them remember the late General, and his swift end.

“It has.” Her smile is sharp. “And it will when we kill Thordak as well, and the rest of his cronies.”

“You’re not angry?”

Vex shakes her head, a small smile on her face. “No, darling. Vax told me you came and spoke to him, and I agree with him. And I’m about to say the same things to you. You kept your promise. You removed Thordak from this plane, and bound him forever to the plane of fire. No one else was hurt.”

“He broke out-“

“How?”

“I don’t know, it should have been impossible.”

“And that’s what I’m talking about,” she exclaims, like Allura has made some massive breakthrough. “Allura, you’re one of the finest arcane minds in Tal’Dorei. If you couldn’t think of a way for him to get out, then that means we’re dealing with some serious, world-ending shit here. There was no way you could have predicted this.”

“Besides,” Vex says, bumping her shoulder into Allura’s companionably. “This just gives us a chance to kill him now.”

“That’s quite a silver lining to take from all this,” Allura is a little thrown by both of the twins’ easy acceptance. Could it really be that simple?

“Have to find them somewhere, I suppose,” she shrugs, smile softening to something much less bloodthirsty. “We’re alive, we know who we’re facing, we have a safe place to sleep, and we reunited with you. Well, maybe reunited isn’t the right word, but you know what I mean.”

She looks at Allura, and back out to where the parents are collecting their napping children. A couple of them wave to her and Vex, who nods back.

“We would have been killed, had we gone with you then,” she says. “We probably would have gotten you killed as well. But now, we have the rest of Vox Machina, some decent experience with dragons, and your wide breadth of knowledge. I know that this time we’ll be the ones coming out on top.”

And you know what? Allura believes her.

**Author's Note:**

> Much love to Ella for being my cheering section through most of the writing <3 I hope you liked the story, and if you did, send me a comment! Also, I know my tagging skills are lacking. If you feel there's any you think this story especially needs, do let me know.
> 
> I'm lorettafryingpan/djinn-and-djuice on tumblr, do come say hi! <3


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